Whew, That Was A Close One

Five whole World of Warcraft expansions ago, the titan Sargeras stabbed a giant sword into Azeroth. For five whole expansions since, players have been asking if we were going to, you know, do anything about that. Seems bad, to have a sword that big stabbing your planet! The planet was even bleeding for a while, but I think that stopped eventually? And for all five of those expansions, World of Warcraft’s devs and leadership have been cheekily avoiding the question of whether or not that giant sword was a problem we may need to solve at some point. But finally, years later, Blizzard seems to have just given a quiet nod to the big, unignorable sword. And it did it…in a single screenshot in the background of a presentation during the middle of Blizzcon today. © Blizzard The Sword of Sargeras, or at least what we think is the Sword of Sargeras, made an appearance during the World of Warcraft: What’s Next panel as associate game director Paul Kubit was onstage talking about the final raid of the current Midnight expansion. The raid is called The Worldcore, and it takes place in, well, the core of the planet, where multi-expansion villain Xal’atath is trying to absorb or consume or take over or otherwise screw with the planet’s soul. Anyway, take a gander at that screenshot above. That’s the world soul right there in the middle, nice and shiny. But what’s that to the left of it? Now I’m no genius, but u/Freelancer0495 over on Reddit seems to think that’s the Sword of Sargeras, or at least the veeeerrrry tip of it. And I’m inclined to agree. Sure looks like the same sword! Spiny. © Blizzard That screenshot is from The War Within opening cinematic, which is essentially the only other meaningful time this sword has been acknowledged in the last five expansions; in this case by Thrall and Anduin, who seem to think Sargeras was aiming his sword at “someone.” Back then, a lot of people guessed that “someone” was Azeroth herself, the planet’s soul, and it’s starting to look like they were right! What are the odds Sargeras, who is like, I-don’t-even-know-how-many-skyscrapers tall, would stab the planet dead on and get within like, literally a few inches of his goal? Pretty low, I’d say! Did the planet do something to protect itself? Is that why Anduin was getting all those weird visions? Azeroth was trying to get him to go down there and get the dang sword out of the soul chamber? Well shoot, if that’s all the planet needed, why have we been wasting all this time racing Goblin cars and hanging out in the poison snake palace! We can fix this in a jiffy, probably! The sword itself isn’t really a mystery, but I think we’re all a bit antsy to remove this giant blight on the Azerothian skyline sometime soon. Sure, it’s cool, but it’s just a little unbelievable that something this massive wouldn’t be causing problems so large that we, the heroes of the world, wouldn’t have to address them promptly. Something something remove the sword from your own planet before you remove the tiny dagger from your neighbor’s planet…whatever. Whew! What a close shave this was! Good thing Sargeras didn’t stab just a teensy bit deeper, huh? Now let’s get that sword outta there, guys, and maybe we can also remove the freaky void harbinger lady trying to eat the planet’s essence while we’re at it.